Wasted Words

The following is a guest post from Bri: It came in the form of an e-mail, and I post it here without edits (with Brian’s permission, of course). It is in response to McCain’s apology for saying that American lives are being wasted in Iraq.

Now HE apologizes. First Obama, now McCain. (And Kerry, though he totally fumbled what he was trying to say because he’s a moron.)

Cracks me up.

Why don’t these guys just stand up and quit being pussies — admit that the reason everyone keeps ‘accidentally’ using the word ‘wasted’ is because it’s TRUE!

American (and Iraqi) lives are being WASTED in a senseless war, just like they were in Vietnam. Your children are dying for NOTHING. Period.

If that offends people’s sensibilities, then SO BE IT. IT’S A FUCKING WAR, PEOPLE! Knock off all the whiny little crap about ‘supporting the troops’ and recognize that YOU ARE FUCKING KILLING THEM.

Jesus goddamn fucking Christ. We have NO leadership in this country. NONE. Just mealy-mouthed little wankers who are so afraid to offend anybody that they end up with nothing meaningful to say, and when they accidentally speak the truth, they have to fall all over themselves to apologize and retract and explain.

If it were ME, I would SHOUT it from the podium: “THE TROOPS ARE BEING KILLED FOR NOTHING. GET IT? NOTHING. OIL PROFITS; POLITICAL POSTURING–IN OTHER WORDS, NOTHING. IF YOU DON’T LIKE THAT, DON’T BLAME ME; BLAME YOUR FUCKING GOVERNMENT. GOT IT? NOW, EITHER VOTE FOR MY ASS OR DON’T, BUT IF YOU KEEP VOTING STATUS QUO AND DEMANDING YOUR LEADERS HOLD YOUR HAND AND KISS YOUR ASS AND LIE TO YOU, THEN YOU GET WHAT YOU FUCKING DESERVE, WHICH IS DEAD CHILDREN — AND A DEVASTATED ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE THAT WILL HAUNT AND DESTROY THE CHILDREN YOU MANAGE NOT TO KILL WITH YOUR SHORT-SIGHTED IGNORANCE.”

So…think i’d get any votes?

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well, I’d vote for you Bri. I know… I’m bias.
The denotation of the word ‘wasted’ is dead on, in my opinion. The word ‘sacrifice’ meaning ‘the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim’ is NOT. Okay, so the connotation of the word ‘wasted’ coming from the mouth of a politician to the ears of family and friends of soldiers, is that of dishonor and disesteem for their loved one who is a patriot. But using the word ‘sacrifice’ is just political semantics, ostensibly giving connotation of ‘reverence’. But toward whom? sorry. Not the soldier; rather the government. I guess the term ‘politically correct’ came about for a reason eh?

I had the same reaction as Bri, watching the news today. The whole was is a waste, a monumental waste, of time, of money, and of human life. That people are dying meaningless deaths does not deprive their lives, or the giving up of their lives, of meaning. Far from it. But McCain doesn’t want the dots to be joined, and for people to understand the simple fact that troops were ordered into a war that was clearly not planned properly, for reasons that the administration no longer uses to justify the continued presence of coalition troops. And, finally, that there is no end in sight.

It is more useful for McCain to take recourse to the “sacrifice” and “hero” frames when referring to the troops, because basically there is no scope to argue with that way of describing what is going on. This is why the Walter Reed story is so important, because it debunks what many of us know, that many commentators on the right are using ‘support the troops’ for its rhetorical power, rather than actually genuinely supporting the troops. The right-wing blogs have completely ignored the Walter Reed story (at the start they went with ‘they picked the Marines that whinge’ meme), which, if they really cared about the troops, rather than using the phrase as a stick to beat their supposedly non-troop supporting, treasonous, unpatriotic opponenets on the left (who have covered Walter Reed, not just as a tactic, but because wow, I guess some people on the left really do care and aren’t just Talking Points blowhards).

Why Obama had to backtrack, I don’t know. But isn’t there a reason why both men seemingly reached automatically for the same word? ie: It’s the right word! What we see them doing now is reinforcing the limits that have been placed on HOW the war can be discussed publicly. What we get is psychologically the opposite of a Freudian slip, with them trying to cover over retrospectively something that was clearly conceived consciously as having ‘misspoken’.

(I am sorry to be a little partisan in this comment, but I am truly sick of listening to Bush ass-kissers on FOX news ‘supporting the troops’. They gave the Walter Reed story about 1/1000th of the time they devoted to that nothing Anna Nicole Smith. If I had some more news channels besides CNN and Fox here in Guatemala, maybe my mood would be better).

One last point. The reason that ‘support the troops’ is obviously rhetorical in its purpose is because it is only ever invoked to defend The President’s conducting of the war, so, once that false correspondence is established, the reverse is true, namely, that you can’t question the President’s handling of the war without being guilty of not supporting the troops/emboldening the enemy.

In this war, Logic is being tortured just as badly as any prisoner in Abu Graib. I have to feel that it is part of a wider war against Thought. By this point, unless you have shares in Haliburton, or are being paid, only an unthinking idiot can be supporting this war.

Your Digg HTLM works Jim, I duggeded you on 2 posts. I have also been looking at your WordPress page source trying to figure out how you might add some code so the Digg stuff is automatic and retroactive, but so far I’m drawing a blank.

Can someone tell me, if soooo many Americans are against this war, why are we still there? Must we wait for the next election?

Or is it that the truth of the matter is the American people don’t have any say on what goes on in our country. We’re like sheep, baaaa!

We the people don’t even vote for the President right. We ‘democratically’ choose someone to place our vote for the Pres. Personally, I doubt our current Pres truthfully won his first election. If this is true, imagine how many other times this happenes. Maybe with the next election too.

Is it so hard to see, ‘we the people’ play by one set of rules or laws. Goverments(not only ours) and powerful companies play by others. Our government does what it wants without permission, be it against the constitution(or will of the people) or not. Like that bully in 8th grade that everybody hated, this is how most countries see the good ol USA. The reason is always the same, it’s in the best interests of national security…

It’s fine and dandy to talk about the problems for ever and ever, but what I want to talk/hear about are the solutions…

Does anyone want to bet on when we’re going to War with Iran, Korea, or China, whether ‘we the people’ want to or not???